Hi! We're Don and Nicole from Washington state. We are approved and pursuing Open Adoption through Independent Adoption Center. If you or anyone you know is looking into adoption as an option, please share our journey. Want to know more about adoption; you can contact us anytime.

I had a hard weekend recently in light of the closure and
then our Superbowl party where I met the 2 babies who should’ve been our babies
BFFS as it were. If our placement hadn’t failed last August our boy would’ve
been about 2 months older than our friend’s boys they had in November/December.
It was a gratifying day to hold the
babies for 8 hours but at the same time it was devastating. I actually cried
the whole way home in a snow storm meaning it took us 3 hours to get home. Now I know it’s on me and my emotions, etc
but seriously it’s been 4 years and I’m human.
The week leading up to this is what I think broke me. I’ve not had issues when the others were
born, except to be jubilant in their arrival. I love those kids as my own. I watched their parents grow up and then have
them so what’s not to love!

Today, I find we’re at cross-roads. I’ve contacted, many lawyers and none have
contacted us back. There was a lawyer in
our news piece that I left a message with and here we are 5 days later and no
response to our message I left for her.
I had also contacted a lawyer in Seattle and he took my name and number
but never called me back; even after our social worker emailed him so ya that
doesn’t breed any confidence. These are AAAA Lawyers so how are we supposed to
be confidant with them handling our potential situation. The answer is we aren’t. Thankfully the lawyer we had with our failed
placement is available but I haven’t reached out yet. This is on my to do list.

We are lucky to have own website on top of other social
media but so far the biggest issue we’ve had is no one shares our pages. Everyone says oh hey grats! hope it happens
soon but no one steps up and shares us. So please if you follow us or even just
read our blog please for the love of all please share our journey because now
without an agency we’re stuck on word of mouth/social media.

Our personal website is http://www.dndadoption.org/

Of course we still have FB, Twitter, Pinterest, Adoptimist, and you tube.

Wednesday, February 1, 2017

Today was not a good day because our agency of almost 4
years has shut down, blacked out, without reason. They have our documents that
we need (and all the other families need and no word on how to obtain them!).

Ok sure they say it’s because of a changing climate that
they can’t handle it but what of the 550+ people you took money from and aren’t
following through with and I mean especially those families who just paid you a
few days ago. What of the Birth families
who are supposed to have life time counseling that will no longer receive it?

I’m upset and so are all the other families. This was done in a most shoddy way. Of course no one employed by the agency can
talk of it and neither can the board of director’s which 2 of them are my
Facebook Friends so great but I’m not standing down.

This is complete bullshit in how it was handled and the CA AG
will be hearing from me tomorrow along with whoever I can call.

I called an agency today and their response; I know we were
completely taken by surprise – We’ve been working with IAC on a case we have and
all was fine yesterday at 4pm when we spoke.
Now you might wonder why that is and the answer is the Board and those
in charge of the IAC didn’t inform the staff that they’d be losing their jobs
today and so for all IAC it was business as usual.

IAC handled this in the absolute worst fashion than they
could have. They really should have
informed clients of the possibility, not taken on new clients or taken new fees
towards PPC (google ads), and enlightened us who were waiting. They could have sent the email before
alerting everyone by disabling our community pages. They could have allowed us
the time to request our records be returned to us.

Now we are all scrambling for new community pages, help, and
just plain support! Our ACs are gone stuffed into a black out with the
bankruptcy. We can’t even thank them for
their service and support.

The official press release said we were all notified and yet
only about half of us were and after the fact.
I got the email about 12:30pm and some others never got it at all (like
my husband and many friends’ waiting to finalize). Whatever is going on here
isn’t normal and needs to be investigated.
I’m calling the DA in CA tomorrow.

If you are a part of the IAC don’t stand by – make your
voice heard. Call the press, write the
press, and make it public how all of us in the triad have been mistreated and
our money and hope stolen from us!

I’m honestly appalled after 4 years and it’s going to take
some time to sink in.

I now have to edit all our pages and websites to delete the
now defunct IAC and as of now I have nothing to replace it with. Ya I have a lawyer on speed dial but I had
hoped for what IAC promised and it’s gone.
Time for more research!

About Us

We're an animal loving couple with 2 dogs and 2 cats hoping to adopt a newborn domestically in an open adoption through Independent Adoption Center. We are excitedly waiting for the opportunity to be parents so please share our journey if you know anyone who might be considering adoption.